OTHER VIEW: Give Senate a chance to vote on medical marijuana

Editorials

March 8, 2010

Anonymous The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Mon Mar 08, 2010, 08:33 PM EST

Imagine, an open and honest debate in the state Senate, and on a very relevant and substantive issue. What happens all too rarely could happen quite soon, on the topic of legalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

The Senate Health Committee voted for such a bill last Tuesday. That puts the fate of legislation, sponsored by Thomas Duane, a Manhattan Democrat, in the hands of the Senate Codes Committee. One more committee vote, then, and the benefits of smoking marijuana for victims of cancer, arthritis and HIV and AIDS could be argued and then acted upon by the entire Senate membership.

That’s right. Every senator would be called upon to vote, and on a measure that enjoys widespread public acceptance.

A Quinnipiac University poll last month found New Yorkers were supportive of the legal use of marijuana for medicinal purposes by a margin of 71 percent to 25 percent.

The regulated use of marijuana, upon a doctor’s prescription, should be legal. The lives of people who suffer from chronic pain, seizures, gastronintestinal illness and mood disorders would most likely be notably better.

Medicinal marijuana almost was legal once in New York. The Legislature actually passed such a law, that then-Gov. Hugh Carey signed, in 1980. The one reasonable stipulation, though, was that the state had to appoint a review board to rule on doctors’ requests to prescribe marijuana. It never did.

Oh, the ways legislation and even laws can die in New York. More recently, the favored way to keep marijuana away from the people who could benefit from it was to keep such a bill from coming to a vote in the Senate.

The more liberal and Democratic-leaning Assembly could vote for it, just as it has passed bills legalizing gay marriage. But the consensus in the Senate was to steer clear of a floor vote where the members could think for themselves.

The legislation under consideration in New York would restrict registered patients from obtaining more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana. The state-licensed entities that dispense it would be overseen by the state Health Department. There would be more regulation than prior legislation had proposed.

Still, Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Long Island Republican, sees loopholes. He expressed fears before the Health Committee that marijuana would effectively become legal for people who didn’t need it for medicinal reasons.

“It’s not clear that this would be used just by people with extraordinary pain,” he says, in rebuttal to people who came before the Health Committee last week expressing hope that they could use marijuana for the most responsible of reasons and without running afoul of the law.

Fine. Let Hannon vote against the bill’s final passage, then. But don’t deprive Duane and the others of the chance to approve it.

— The Times Union of Albany

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